The Devil’s Eye
In March 1899, the pearling fleets from Thursday Island, Cooktown and the French owned islands of the Pacific were anchored near Cape Melville, on the east coast of Cape York.
Courtesy Fourth Estate
More than 100 schooners, luggers and cutters were fishing for pearl shell, and aboard were more than a thousand men, women and children.
They were from 26 different nations and they had been brought to the colony of Queensland as guest workers for the pearling industry. Most were from the Pacific islands, Japan, Timor, Malaya, and Ceylon.
On March the 4th, many of them gathered in the calm of Bathurst Bay, under the lee of Cape Melville, to celebrate the end of the working week and a day off.
Out to sea, an intense cyclone named Mahina was speeding towards them. The deadliest and most intense storm in recorded Australian history was just hours away and by morning there’d be no vessels left floating in Bathurst Bay. Most of the people would be dead.
The Devil’s Eye is based on the true events of what became known as the pearling disaster of 1899.
The novel was researched and written with the help of a fellowship from the State Library of Queensland’s John Oxley Library.
It was also made possible by a major grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, a grant from Arts Queensland, and a fellowship through Varuna – The Writers House to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland.
